The United States is deathly ill from fighting a century-long chronic infection (call it Bacterium Progressivism) that Americans can no longer afford to ignore. Donald Trump claims he has (or is) the cure for what currently plagues this nation, but a number of conservative intellectuals are horrified by the idea and point out that Trump is no conservative at all and would be merely a dose of snake oil. As Ben Shapiro outlines at Breitbart, to whatever extent Trump is conservative, his record shows he’s at best a very recent convert. Of course, the symptom-free D.C. establishment want to see both Trump and Cruz dumped so constituents can be force-fed another useless placebo disguised as the next blockbuster cure.

I don’t know the appropriate length of time for an individual to be held in quarantine after having claimed to have been cured of some or all their formerly progressive contagion. I’m sure a Thomas Sowell or David Horowitz could better provide guidance here. What I do know is that to date, Trump has gained support by blasting through a wall of political correctness and successfully delivering certain messages that resonate with a large number of people who are justly concerned about the survival of the United States. But this is true only because Trump is seen as a D.C. outsider and his supporters believe (rightly or wrongly) that he will actually help deliver needed medicine to at least one or more areas of this terrible infection.

Perhaps a better analogy for the Trump phenomenon is that he more resembles what is called a liposome than any form of medicine. A liposome is a microscopic membrane shell that can be used to encapsulate things such as antibiotics and deliver them more effectively to specifically targeted areas of infection (I only know this because I’m invested in a biotech that’s using liposomes to deliver a common antibiotic directly to serious lung infections). What’s the use in administering a known effective drug (even a superior one) if it has little chance of ever reaching its intended target?

When certain infections are left untreated for too long, the bacteria can form a slime-like protective barrier called a biofilm that is extremely resistant to antibiotics. By using liposomes to carry medicine with an electric charge opposite that of the biofilm, instead of getting hung up in the biofilm (opposite charges attract), some of the same (previously ineffective) antibiotic is able to slip past the biofilm before being released where the bacteria are hiding, giving the drug a much higher chance of eradicating the disease.

While the Republican establishment occasionally pays lip-service to prescribing the medicine needed to save the U.S., it is clear that they have no interest in actually administering it, as the GOPe is part of what is in essence a biofilm. A biofilm protecting big-government in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere that is made up of politicians of both parties, media elites, cronies, big-education, Hollywood and scores of political pundits. This slime-barrier is tightly bound together with propaganda, political correctness, unlimited excuses, fabulous social gatherings and bundles and bundles of other people’s money.

Sure, a controlled dose of liberty-saving medicine may occasionally be permitted to bypass the biofilm and briefly slow down the progression of the disease to pacify the masses. But the establishment — human nature being what it is — mostly disallows anything other than placebo from penetrating the biofilm and reaching the steadily growing abscess that is Washington D.C. Trump’s seeming ability to penetrate this D.C. biofilm (as an outsider), while promising to use medicine that is positive (+) America, is why so many are willing to take a chance with him. And why the establishment of both parties are so terrified of him.

Trump clearly has a mixed ideological record and I certainly find many of his past (and recent) statements troubling and contradictory. But I do recognize and admire his ability to penetrate this D.C. biofilm. The thing is, if Trump truly wants to “make America great again” — a goal I suspect is as genuine as Obama’s successful negative (-) plan to “fundamentally transform” the U.S. was — he will have no choice but to expand upon his apparent new-found conservatism and embrace the limited-government (including separation of powers), free-market medicine as prescribed by our Founders more than two centuries ago. And if he doesn’t and ends up just getting stuck in the biofilm, well, we’ll essentially have what we have now.

Most Americans who recognize the rapidly fading health of this nation are intelligent enough to read and understand the Trump warning label with its list of possible side-effects. The Trump phenomenon shows just how desperate Americans are in that so many are willing to accept these potential side-effects for the possibility of seeing a cure delivered to even one area of this progressive disease.

A one-term presidency in which much of the immigration problem is cured (although I personally don’t think a wall would be as necessary if the giant red carpet were removed through entitlement reform) and ObamaCare repealed, minus any other major reforms would be an enormous success.

While Donald Trump isn’t the candidate that I’ve been supporting throughout this race, I’ve come to the realization that prescribing the needed liberty-saving medicine is mostly pointless without the ability to penetrate and break up the biofilm currently protecting Washington, D.C. With that said, at some point certain conservatives may want to stop trying to destroy the liposome and instead begin preparing to help influence what types of medicine go into it.

Last weekend, my father-in-law took my son and me to Arizona to watch a couple of Giants games during Spring Training – an early birthday gift for my son, and a truly fabulous experience that I’m sure my soon to be ten-year-old will never forget. But before we even made it to Arizona, I witnessed something else pretty unforgettable during the flight. About an hour or so into our journey from Sacramento to Phoenix, I noticed three extremely bright lights off in the distance while looking through a window on the right side of the aircraft. The lights were so intense that I thought I was looking at three miniature suns. In all my years of flying (that route included), I had never seen anything like this before.

I had my suspicions that the lights had something to do with some sort of solar farm, and after reading an article in The Daily Caller and doing a little research using Google Maps, I realized that I was in fact a victim of the world’s largest solar thermal plant – and that I wasn’t alone:

Airplane pilots cruising over southern California have been complaining about a “nearly blinding” glare emanating from a massive government-funded solar thermal facility.

The Ivanpah solar energy plant in San Bernardino County is the world’s largest solar thermal plant and has 173,500 large mirrors that reflect sunlight onto boilers in three 459-foot towers. A feat of modern engineering — to green energy advocates, but a flying hazard to pilots.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) got two anonymous complaints in August that mentioned a “blinding glare” coming from the Ivanpah solar facility. One complaint came from a Los Angeles air traffic controller and the other from a small transport plane pilot that took off from an airport in Boulder City, Nevada.

“The FAA is aware of potential glare from solar plants and is exploring how to best alert pilots to the issue,” an FAA spokesman told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Why didn’t someone think of this before breaking ground on such an enormous project? Well, according to the DC article, they did:

BrightSource’s environmental impact study for Ivanpah included mitigation measures for glare issues related to the site’s reflective mirrors. The aviation community actually raised such worries during the environmental review process.

Ivanpah’s environmental impact study found that the solar thermal plant could cause temporary blindness to pilots flying within 3,300 feet of the heliostats, which compromises safety. BrightSource had to develop a heliosat position plan to mitigate the potential harm from Ivanpah’s glare.

I think the study may have been off by more than a few decimal points with its estimate of pilots having to be within only 3,300 feet of the heliostats to experience temporary blindness. When I snapped the below photo (the only one that wasn’t totally overexposed) with my phone, the aircraft was at about 35,000 feet and dozens of miles to the East of Ivanpah’s 459-foot green-‘n’-clean towers.

Many who are blinded by green energy don’t know about or simply ignore the heavy reliance on taxpayer subsidies and massive cronyism surrounding it. But now, in addition to the fiscal impracticality of green energy, we have Bald Eagles being killed by ugly wind turbines and pilots being dangerously disorientated by giant solar plants – and as if the Ivanpah solar plant wasn’t causing enough trouble, it’s the very same plant that has been conveniently cooking birds before they fall to the ground.

Isn’t it interesting how green energy (and those who amass their wealth from it) gets a free pass from any of its negative impacts, unlike the economy-growing affordable energy options? I guess those privileged to make these green omelets are permitted to break a few eggs – even if some of those eggs happen to be a protected species or are otherwise diligently protected by the TSA.

The next time I fly this route, I’ll be sure to bring along a few marshmallows to roast along the way.

President Obama just threw another wrench into the economy with his new heavy-duty truck efficiency standards. While it may be desirable to see more efficient trucks on the road, as Kevin Williamson at NRO pointed out — this technology isn’t free.

President Barack Obama is a masterly practitioner of the occult art of single-entry bookkeeping. Consider his speech today, in which he praised the fuel economy of a new “super truck,” making the point that, since most U.S. freight moves in trucks, lower operating costs for freight operators should in theory mean lower costs for consumers. And he would have a point — if that fuel-economy technology were free. It is not. It costs money to develop. It costs money to deploy. Where it adds to the price of a vehicle, it also adds to ownership costs such as insurance and taxation.

And as truckers, especially single operators (AKA small businessmen), have found out in California, free it is not.

So just how inefficient are these evil heavy-duty gas hogs? The White House “fact sheet” claims that in 2010, heavy-duty vehicles accounted for only four percent of the vehicles on the road, but consumed twenty-five percent of the fuel. While this sounds pretty bad on the surface, perhaps we should take a look under the hood given the source?

I think it’s important to keep in mind that vehicles contribute to the economy by doing work, be it carrying people to and from the office, or transporting thousands of pounds of goods across state lines. But is it really fair to compare giant cargo haulers with passenger cars simply as a percentage of the vehicles on the road? Shouldn’t the efficiency of doing actual work be what is instead considered?

If heavy-duty vehicles account for only four percent of what is traveling the road, this means that out of every one-hundred vehicles only four would be heavy-duty, and ninety-six would be standard autos. I understand there is a large variance of vehicular size and weight, but for simplicity, let’s take just one group and compare ninety-six passenger vehicles having a total loaded weight of 4,000 lbs each with four semi-trucks with a total legal loaded weight of 80,000 lbs each. The ninety-six cars would weigh a total of 384,000 lbs and the four heavy-duty trucks would weigh a total of 320,000 lbs. When looked at this way, four percent of these vehicles are doing almost as much economic work as the other ninety-six percent. Put another way, the heavy-duty trucks do about forty-five percent of the total work while representing only four percent of the ‘workers’ in this case. Further comparison using actual payload capacity would only serve to make these monstrous trucks look even better.

But what about comparing fuel consumption with work done? Using the same vehicle specifications as above, a truck with a total legal weight of 80,000 lbs can travel about (again keeping it simple) five miles using one gallon of fuel. A passenger car that gets 20 MPG uses .25 gallons of fuel during that same five mile trip but only hauls a total load of 4000 lbs. In order to do the same work (move 80,000 lbs) as the heavy-duty trucks, twenty of these cars would be needed. But in order for those twenty cars to move the same amount of weight over the same five miles, they would instead consume five gallons of fuel. That is a 400% increase if my math is correct.

I won’t get into it here, but couldn’t we also factor in the energy used to produce these vehicles as well? A semi truck engine can last over one million miles while a standard auto engine will last only one or two hundred thousand miles.

It looks to me like we already have “super trucks,” Mr. President. And I have faith that over time, the market will improve upon what we already have, and do so in an efficient manner.

Left alone, the free market has no problem efficiently pulling its own weight. But when the dead-weight of politicians and their “brilliant” ideas are piled upon it, the economy slows down to a crawl.

President Obama is spreading class-warfare lies again. If Obama gets what he wants gas prices will rise — which is what he wants. He paints a false picture of money being extracted from taxpayers and then given to oil companies — Wrong!

Larry Kudlow discusses this in this Townhall article:

But “there you go again” can apply equally to President Obama. Once again this week, the president was out on the campaign trail bashing and oil and gas companies. And he continued to spread major falsehoods about this industry, which I guess is the polite way to put it.

Obama is obsessed with oil and gas. He is a prisoner of the left-wing environmental groups. And really, he’s extending his leftist class-warfare attack from rich people to successful oil and gas producers.

As is evident from the Climategate e-mails, a small group of scientists, mainly in the U.K. and U.S., have managed to freeze out contrary evidence from being published in the scientific literature or in IPCC reports. The self-described “Team” members brazenly discuss strategies and action plans to further “The Cause.” Unfortunately, they have largely succeeded — and continue to influence publications, thanks to some key journalists and editors. In consequence of this evident conspiracy, it is hardly surprising that politicians, the media, and the general public are receiving entirely wrong information about supposedly catastrophic effects of a future warming.

I employ the services of a landscape maintenance company (AKA a gardener) to maintain my yard. The very existence of his business depends on the collection of that $80 from me ($2.63 a day) as well as the 30 or 40 other people whom he provides his services to each month. This type of service may seem like an unnecessary “luxury” to many but it’s a mutually beneficial transaction that forms just one of the small but vital cogs in the wheel of capitalism.

With the downturn (think death-spiral) of the economy in California, my wife and I have had to make many sacrifices in order to keep our own household on a sustainable path. While brainstorming ways to save money, the idea of letting our gardener go and doing the yard maintenance work ourselves has come up several times. But we always come back to the idea that we need to resist succumbing to this recession and do our part in helping to keep what’s left of this fragile economy alive. Fortunately for him, and us, we’ve been able to continue to utilize his services — for now.

How many other s-corp “rich” individuals, just like us, are out there who would be unable to maintain a service such as this if more of our money ended up being extracted through higher tax rates? If our taxes were to increase by even a small amount (like, say, $80 per month), our gardener would unfortunately end up being one of the first casualties (although I might have to reconsider if he started whistling Disney tunes like the Solyndra robots).

President Obama also said: “This is not class warfare; it is math.” Okay, let’s do some simple math. Let’s look at what could have been done with the $535 million in taxpayer dollars that Obama “invested” in just that one Solyndra deal alone. If you were to take the salary of one gardener who has 45 clients at $80 each per month, his earnings would add up to 3,600 per month, or $43,200 per year. This means that if the $535 million that was carelessly wasted on the Solyndra deal had been left in the hands of the taxpayers, it theoretically could have been used to pay the annual salary of about 12,384 gardeners. How does that stack up to the 1,100 who just lost their jobs at the luxurious Solyndra plants that built solar panels for twice the amount that they were able to sell them for?

It looks more like we’re swapping temporary “green jobs” for real “green jobs” and at an exchange rate that is much, much less than desirable. And that is only the tip of the iceberg when you look into the green energy dealings of the Obama administration. The administration has just approved another $5 billion (or about 115,740 gardeners for reference) in loan guarantees for these types of programs, including one to an enterprise that Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law is tied to (can you spell c-r-o-n-y?). And as I write, there is new news that the $500-million green jobs training program came up short on its goals.

Of course, not all of this tax money would end up being used to pay the salaries of gardeners if it were left in the hands of taxpayers. But stop and think for a moment about all of the other jobs in this nation that are tied to seemingly insignificant sums of money that Obama thinks taxpayers can “afford” to hand over to the government without consequence.

With an inefficient government bureaucracy, there is no amount of additional tax revenue that will ever be enough to satisfy its tremendous appetite if it is left unrestrained and unaccountable. This is why, as history has proven time and time again, the use of capital is much more productive when mostly left in the hands of the private sector.

To gain a little more perspective on the enormity of the sums of taxpayer money the Obama administration has been spending, let’s do the same calculation as above using the original projected amount of Obama’s stimulus package ($787 billion). According to the “math,” we could pay about 18,217,592 gardeners for one full year with that “stimulus” money.

Talk about a real “green jobs” program — there wouldn’t be one single square inch of land left in the United States that wasn’t fully lush and green.

Considering my electrical background, this administration sure has given me some easy things to write about lately. My last piece on the subject of electrical was on the un-sustainability of the Chevy Volt and now comes the news that Solyndra, who received over 535 million in loan guarantees from the US tax payer, has filed for bankruptcy and laid off all 1,100 employees (I thought these loans were going to create 3,000 jobs?). Once again the tax payer gets fried because of naïve policy.

I drove by the Solyndra plant just last week on my way back from cleaning out a storage facility I shut down in San Jose (another story) and was impressed by the architectural detail that went into those buildings. It’s obvious that a lot of thought (and money) went into their design and construction. Unfortunately it’s what’s been happening on the inside of those pretty buildings that counts in this case. And the ugliness is now out in the open for all to see.

About four or five years ago I was told by colleagues, employees and home owners alike that I should expand into the solar end of the business — that it was the wave of the future — that it would work this time. Sure, I could have played the dog-pile-on-the-crony-dollar game, but it appeared to me that the only way to keep the power on in that industry (at the time) was through the use of heavy government subsidies. That was an instant — “caution high-voltage” — sign for me to stay away. Sure in hindsight I could have made a few quick bucks but I think my resistance to getting involved has proven correct.

Not that I have anything against solar technology (believe me I love electrical innovation) but if something can’t sustain itself in the free market after its mass consumption of capital and its continued subsidies, then common sense says that when the money gets turned-off (and it always does) it’s going to get dark pretty quick. Worse yet, if those continued subsidies are still unable to provide enough power (“hope” won’t do the trick) to keep the lights on, then it’s obvious the meter is going to stop spinning. In the case of Solyndra, the taxpayer is on the hook for the final bill.

There is one other problem that I can see from a consumer standpoint. Maybe I’m naïve, but if I wanted to put my money into a large “investment” that would offset, or eliminate my electric bills, wouldn’t I be better off investing it in a small condo or something else that would actually pay for those electric bills forever? Isn’t “investing” in solar panels basically just pre-paying for the next 30 years of electricity (at which point the panels need to be replaced)? Am I the only one out there that thinks this way.

“Only 125 Volts” is the first thing that caught my eye in an article I stumbled upon from the National Legal and Policy Center. As I come from an electrical background, I would agree that 125 Volts is nothing to get too excited about, but this article wasn’t teaching you how to replace a circuit breaker, instead it was discussing the total brown-out of Chevy Volt sales in the month of July. “Only 125 Volts were sold during the month of July.” Somehow I doubt this comes as a major shock to anyone with the slightest amount of good business sense.

While 125 Volts is fairly low as far as voltages go, it most certainly will get your attention if you accidently come in contact with it (please just trust me on this). On the other hand, it’s going to take much higher Volt-age sales numbers to attract investors’ attention and give them confidence in GM’s “business” decisions.

In order for power transmission to work over great distances, power companies must step-up the Voltage to tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Volts. Using a lower Voltage produces too many losses and is simply not sustainable over long distances (speaking of Voltage drop, 1 Chevy Volt can only travel about 40 miles). Similarly, if GM wants to finally become sustainable it will have to reduce its losses and step-up the Voltage. In this case it will need to sell many, many thousands of Volts.

In the real world (not in la la land) the way a company does this is by offering a product or service that the public actually wants, and is willing to buy, in a sufficient enough quantity as to make the company a profit (or at least break even). Following a President’s social agenda instead of listening to the market is very bad business and means that the program will need to be subsidized by the sales of other profitable products or worse.

Electrical safety is no laughing matter and if the rules aren’t properly followed someone is going to get hurt or something will get broken. The same can be said for the rules of economics, which is fine if a company is forced to live (or die) by its decisions, but sadly the last time GM broke those rules it was the US taxpayer who got fried. Are taxpayers being set-up for another shock at some point in the future?